Monday, November 14, 2016

The nearest available parking an hour and a half before the race was 0.6 miles from the start.

Not sure why they even called it the “Trinity River Run” since—instead of using the long, beautiful Trinity River recreation trail—most of the course wound through ugly, smelly parts of Dallas, starting near the jail, and over dangerous cracked and crumbling asphalt and unmarked potholes, closing MANY intersections and obstructing a ridiculous amount oftraffic, as well as running us up and down over and under every possible bridge.

And I'm wondering how the heck they can afford all those cops and closure permits—I've never seen so many on just a 10k course—when the event took a HUGE loss last year, which was its first year.

I was killing myself through most of the second half of the race to stay ahead of some asshole wearing strong perfume. WHO THE HELL WEARS PERFUME TO RUN?!

There were too few water stations on the course—no problem for me since I brought and drank all of my water bottle, but I heard several participants complaining of thirst—and they ran out of cups for the second and final water stations.

Then the finish line was a quarter mile away—no exaggeration—from the medals, water, and warm fucking beer.

At the end there were too few trash bins provided, such that I had to set my warm beer on the ground when I left, because the bins were all overflowing onto the pavement, making a big damn mess of such a nice park.

I mostly signed up for this race because last year's tech shirt was so great, but this year's has a poorer quality of fabric and a crummy fit.

Monday, November 7, 2016

When I got to the lake well before dawn, I used the
portapotty, and then discovered I’d locked my key in my car. With my phone. And
all my gear. It was still dark, and my car was the only one in this lot . . .
except for a cop car at the far end.

I walked over to ask if the officer could call a locksmith
for me, and he looked at me solemnly and said, “No.” Then his face lit up and
he said he could actually help me because he recently bought a Slim Jim kit
since so many people ask if he can help them get into their cars. And he hadn’t
gotten to use it yet and was kind of excited to try.

As we went to my car, I wondered if maaaybe I should have
pulled off the Black Lives Matter decal, but it was still pretty dark, so it
went unnoticed or unmentioned. I was going to offer to get my ID from the trunk
to prove it’s my car (there were a few other runners in the area), but he never
asked, and I finally got to start my run. Thanks, DPD!

All of this happened, by the way, with a high surge of
anxiety that wouldn’t dissipate for at least 5 miles.

I had been SO looking forward to the forecasted low 50s
weather, but it ended up in the low 60s instead. I kept wondering “wtf?” as I
passed so many people in sweatshirts while I was basically sweating my tits
off.

The run itself was wholly unremarkable . . . except that it
wasn’t nearly as torturous as I’d expected! My Vibram FiveFingers just weren’t
working for me for more than about 10 miles, so my long runs in recent weeks
have all been epic suffer-fests. Yesterday I had on a new pair of Asics, and I’d
finally figured out how to lace them to give my toes enough space to spread and
keep my heels from slipping.

There was an official half marathon happening on the trail
that day, and I arrived before it began, had no trouble parking, finished after
it ended, and faced no delays on my drive home. What luck!

I also packed myself an icy cold, post-run egg nog in the
car. It was awesome: 10/10 recommend.(I’m so clever) I had
a 90-minute massage that afternoon and felt pretty good on this morning’s
2.5-mile recovery run. Who’da thunk?

And then I realized the marathon is just over a month away,
and holy crap, that’s kinda scary.

Well, I’m already chowing down on chocolate, trying to
suppress the election anxiety, so let’s just roll the marathon nerves in there
too. I'm sure it will all be fine.